AI Con USA 2026 - Project Manager

Customize your AI Con USA 2026 experience with sessions covering project management.

Monday, June 8

Dona Sarkar
Microsoft
MB

Human in the Loop

New
Monday, June 8, 2026 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

"We love AI and use it for everything we do!" "We hate AI and will NEVER use it for anything ever, I swear to god!" Which camp are you in? This will be a question that will come up over and over in 2026 and beyond. If you use AI for EVERYTHING and think you can be mistaken for AI…has AI not already taken your job? We all need to get INTENTIONAL about our stance in the AI-verse. Have you thought deeply about what is a good activity for AI to lead on and what should be uniquely human? We are already seeing a premium price tag on in-person, uniquely human-to-human experiences, and this will...

Jeremiah Marble
3rd Rodeo AI
Dona Sarkar
Microsoft
MF

Become an AI Power User

Monday, June 8, 2026 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Impostering a bit in the AI-verse? Overwhelmed by daily AI announcements? Unsure you're using AI most effectively? Tiny bit of FOMO? We've got you covered! In this workshop, we'll help you become an AI Power User. Become a boss at your job, whatever your role or industry! We'll show you where AI shines and where you'll want to be careful, plus toss you lots of hands-on practice. In our time together, we'll help you pinpoint YOUR niche, build a custom AI assistant, and develop a comms strategy to show off your new skills. You'll walk out with cutting-edge knowledge, a prompt library...

Moshe Rasis
New York University
MH

AI Transformation Workshop: Rethinking Change Through the Human Lens

New
Monday, June 8, 2026 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping organizations, but technology alone doesn’t deliver transformation — people do. This half-day, hands-on workshop helps leaders and teams manage the human side of AI adoption through proven frameworks and real-world application. Grounded in the change-management principles of the ACMP (Association of Change Management Professionals) and informed by coaching practices from the ICF (International Coach Federation), the session walks participants through a detailed, action-oriented playbook for guiding AI transformation while keeping trust, learning, and...

Tuesday, June 9

Tariq King
Test IO, an EPAM Company
TA

Prompt Engineering for Software Practitioners

Tuesday, June 9, 2026 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

With the sudden rise of ChatGPT and large language models (LLMs), practitioners are using these tools for all aspects of engineering. This includes leveraging LLMs for creating software artifacts such as requirements documents, source code, and tests; reviewing them for issues and making corrective suggestions, and analyzing or summarizing results or outcomes. However, if LLM's are not fed good prompts describing the task that the AI is supposed to perform, their responses can be inaccurate and unreliable. Join Tariq King as he teaches you how to craft high-quality AI prompts and...

Dona Sarkar
Microsoft
Jeremiah Marble
3rd Rodeo AI
TD

This Is Our Agent, We Make the Call

Tuesday, June 9, 2026 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

Agents! Finally, a term that might be even more over-hyped than AI! But what exactly are Agents, and more importantly, how do you use them? Where do Agents fit within the overall AI toolkit? What capabilities do they add, and what tasks can they help us perform? Dona and Jeremiah will help you gain a solid understanding of Agents and the fundamental components of an Agent-based AI system. You’ll learn key design principles for Agents, as well as when to leverage them and scenarios where they may not be the best choice. We'll cover how to identify business problems that are well-suited for...

TF

AI Deep Dive: Exploring AWS Using Real-World Scenarios

Tuesday, June 9, 2026 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Deepen your AI and machine learning expertise using AWS in an Immersive, hands-on workshop. You’ll use real-world AI challenges while leveraging AWS services like Amazon SageMaker, Bedrock, and Lambda to build and optimize AI-driven solutions. As the session unfolds, new constraints and data anomalies will emerge, mirroring the complexities of real-world AI/ML implementation. Gain insight into how AI solutions perform under evolving conditions, learning to adapt, optimize, and troubleshoot unexpected challenges. Learn the importance of collaboration, strategic thinking, problem-solving,...

Tariq King
Test IO, an EPAM Company
TG

Agentic AI: From Rules to Reasoning

New
Tuesday, June 9, 2026 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

AI agents have existed for decades, but generative AI has fundamentally changed what agents can do and how they are designed and built. Come and explore the evolution of AI agents across two major waves. First, learn the foundations of Agentic AI through agents built using rules, heuristics, and traditional machine learning, examining where these approaches excel and why they struggle with complexity, ambiguity, and scale. Then dive into the second wave of agents powered by generative AI and multimodal large language models. These modern agents can reason, plan, use tools, and interact...

Jason_Arbon
Testers.AI
TH

Vibe-Coding a Business: Using AI to Rapidly Build, Test, and Validate Real Products

New
Tuesday, June 9, 2026 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

AI has fundamentally changed how quickly new businesses can be created. With modern, high-end models, individuals and teams can now move from a raw idea to a functioning product, market narrative, sales motion, and operating loop in days rather than months. The challenge is no longer whether AI can generate assets—it’s how to use AI intentionally across the entire business lifecycle to produce outcomes that are relevant, credible, and sustainable. In this hands-on tutorial, Jason Arbon leads participants through a practical, end-to-end approach to “vibe-coding” a business using AI. The...

Wednesday, June 10

Dona Sarkar
Microsoft
K1

Will the Real Autonomous Agent Please Stand Up: What’s Real, What’s Not, and What You Actually SHOULD Be Investing in in the AI-Verse

Wednesday, June 10, 2026 - 8:30am to 9:30am

If you’ve seen the news lately, the tech bros will have you believe that AI is both here to take your job and also your soul. On the other side, people are saying that we are in an AI-bubble, it’s all hype, and we don’t need to worry about it at all. Which is it? The truth is…it’s a little of BOTH. Dona will demystify what the latest buzzwords in AI (what is OpenClaw all about) and show you a roadmap for how you can AND SHOULD be using AI in your day-to-day life. You’ll learn how to set up an experiment framework for yourself, identify the workflows AI is actually good for, how to run the...

David Colwell
Tricentis
K3

Why Your Agentic PR Never Gets Approved—Going from Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering

Wednesday, June 10, 2026 - 3:50pm to 4:35pm

You can write 100% of your code with AI, and only be 15% more productive. Want to know why? Solving the problem of moving faster as an engineer is about way more than code. You design, you problem solve, you discuss and communicate, you test, you shepherd the PR through review, you deploy, and you observe. So why are you being told you should be 10x faster now that AI can write code? David will discuss practical solutions for safely accelerating your entire workflow with AI. He will look at how to collaborate with PM, how to use AI planning, how to ensure validations are solid and builds...

Ken Johnston
Envorso
Bob Rapp
GM (General Motors)
Ravi Vedula
Microsoft
K4

Show Me the ROI: What Enterprise AI Actually Delivers in Year 4 - Panel

Wednesday, June 10, 2026 - 4:40pm to 5:40pm

The hype cycle is over. The pilot graveyard is full. MIT research suggests that 95% of Generative AI implementations have little to no measurable impact on P&L. So what separates the 5% that actually deliver? In this no-fluff panel, practitioners from the front lines of enterprise AI — spanning automotive, cloud platforms, and the messy middle of real-world deployment — will have a candid conversation about what's working, what consistently stalls, and what it actually takes to move from experimentation to results.

The panel will discuss:

The use cases that outperform the hype...

Thursday, June 11

Kat Styons
Yahoo
K5

Building Agentic Engineering Teams

Thursday, June 11, 2026 - 8:30am to 9:30am

Agentic engineering has quietly inverted the fundamental bottleneck of software development. For decades, the hard part was building, so we optimized teams for execution speed, hired specialists to cover capability gaps, and treated wasted work as a cost to be managed through careful planning and consensus. Now an engineer with the right tools can scaffold major features in hours, often faster than they can get a meeting on the calendar to discuss it. This talk is a field guide for leading teams through that inversion. It reexamines the hiring calculus, what makes an early career engineer...

Jessie Thomas
Allen Institute
K6

The Next Era of Biological Discovery

Thursday, June 11, 2026 - 9:35am to 10:20am

We are entering a defining chapter for bioscience—one where AI is no longer an accessory, but a core engine of discovery. At the Allen Institute, AI is being woven throughout the scientific process empowering research teams to analyze complex biological systems at scale. Their teams are collaborating to develop frontier AI applications like advanced computer vision to interpret high-resolution imaging data, multimodal models that integrate complex molecular, cellular, and physiological signals, as well as intelligent systems to assist researchers as they navigate and synthesize vast...

K7

Proven, Not Promised: Real-World Insights from Nelnet’s AI Transformation

Thursday, June 11, 2026 - 3:30pm to 4:15pm

Engineering leaders are under constant pressure to deliver faster, improve quality, and reduce costs despite fixed resources. At Nelnet, this challenge was compounded by ongoing acquisitions, a complex application landscape, and competing team priorities. Brittany Wilson will discuss how they evaluated the impact of Generative AI (GenAI) on the software development lifecycle without disrupting critical delivery work and how Nelnet adopted a measured pilot approach. Over 12 weeks, a side-by-side experiment compared a GenAI-enabled team with a business-as-usual team working on similar...

Friday, June 12

Jeff Payne
Coveros
SMT5

Think Tank Discussion Parts I, II, III, and Wrap-Up

Friday, June 12, 2026 - 11:15am to 3:00pm

Think Tank Discussion Part I: Problem Definitions | 11:15 AM

Join with your peers in an engaging and highly interactive session to discuss the issues that affect you most. Using answers to the question “As a Leader, What is Keeping You Up at Night?” posed at Thursday’s evening reception, participants will form small groups to work on finding solutions to pressing leadership & management issues. Discussions will review identified issues, barriers to change, and focus on innovative strategies and practical next steps. At the end of the think tank, all feedback will be collected and...